So far my conclusions have been that (at least with my San Francisco water), temperature and filtering have less of an effect than trapped air that migrates to the center of the freezing cube. Thus I am trying to minimize this effect.

In this experiment I froze ice in layers in small lasagna pans to see if we had a maximized surface area, hopefully no air would get trapped in the ice and form cloudy parts. Apparently some commercial ice machines such as Kold Draft spray an upside-down mist of water in layers, so this would be the home approximation of that.

I tried this experiments with tiny layers, medium layers, and large layers in the same sized pan, the difference being that I added more water per layer. I let the water freeze before adding another layer.

As you can see, none of the layers turned out clear:

(Tiny layers, medium layers, and large layers left to right.)

The small sized layers were made only adding a couple of ounces of water at a time, so I can't get much smaller layers than these unless I use a spray bottle.

We'll have to call this one a failure. Freezing water in layers does not appear to make clear ice, just ice with smaller layers of trapped air.

Below is a closeup of the layers for your ice ogling enjoyment.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

So far my conclusions have been that (at least with my San Francisco water), temperature and filtering have less of an effect than trapped air that migrates to the center of the freezing cube. Thus I am trying to minimize this effect.

In this experiment I froze ice in layers in small lasagna pans to see if we had a maximized surface area, hopefully no air would get trapped in the ice and form cloudy parts. Apparently some commercial ice machines such as Kold Draft spray an upside-down mist of water in layers, so this would be the home approximation of that.

I tried this experiments with tiny layers, medium layers, and large layers in the same sized pan, the difference being that I added more water per layer. I let the water freeze before adding another layer.

As you can see, none of the layers turned out clear:

(Tiny layers, medium layers, and large layers left to right.)

The small sized layers were made only adding a couple of ounces of water at a time, so I can't get much smaller layers than these unless I use a spray bottle.

We'll have to call this one a failure. Freezing water in layers does not appear to make clear ice, just ice with smaller layers of trapped air.

Below is a closeup of the layers for your ice ogling enjoyment.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

Camper English

Alcademics is the website from Camper English, a cocktails and spirits writer and educator who has contributed to publications including Popular Science, Saveur, Details, Whisky Advocate, Drinks International, and many more. He is the pioneer of the "Directional Freezing" technique to make perfectly clear ice. Camper is a judge of the SF World Spirits Competition, a former World's 50 Best Bars polling coordinator, and the founder of CocktailSafe.org.Learn more about:Camper and AlcademicsSpeakingConsultingEventsCamper's Other WebsitesCocktailSafeNew BoozeCocktailGreen